Although iStat Menus is a favorite of many of the Mac|Life team, it’s fair to say it appeals to only a certain kind of user. If you don’t care about what’s going on inside your Mac, steer clear. But if you’re the sort of person who likes to keep an eye on your Mac’s performance, iStat Menus is the best monitoring utility we’ve seen.

Venerable music gear maker KORG has already brought some very cool audio apps to the iOS universe, and it continues the onslaught with Gadget, a slick, lovely-sounding iPad app with 15 synth devices — each capable of some true sonic mayhem, and all wrapped into a productive sequencing environment. It’s not hard to quickly whip up some pounding electronic dance music (EDM), especially once you get the hang of the interface, but there are significant holes in the slick veneer.

With something of a cult following in the Android world, Caustic comes into the iOS universe with real pedigree – a rare event. But just moments after launching the app, it’s hard not to become an instant believer in this truly potent, fully featured sonic monster, and the almost overwhelming number of excellent-sounding ingredients it offers up for cooking up tasty riffs and compositions. Caustic delivers an array of synthesizers, effects, and MIDI recording tools, featuring both depth and excellent sound quality, plus a vast variety of useful presets for each and every one of its many components.

Many OS X plugins and iOS amps offer software-modeled versions of guitar amplifiers, but Bias - Amps! — an iPad-only app from Positive Grid — is the most impressive and totally realistic one we’ve ever heard. It’s so good, you might be tempted to sell your heavy old Fender Super Twin Reverb on eBay and buy a dedicated iPad to run it. And if you’re the kind of six-string slinger who’s not afraid to get under the hood, you can fine-tune your tone in ways we’ve never seen in software.

Dancing at parties or clubs can be a terrifying prospect if you don’t have any training in (rhythmically) moving your body to music. And enrolling in classes to learn isn’t much less frightening. But even if you have two left feet, there’s a dancer lurking somewhere beneath your skin — and an app may be just the ticket to get you over enough of the embarrassment to shake your thing in front of other people or check out proper classes. These eight apps are sure to get you grooving, grinding, and gliding to the beat — or at least flailing a little less.

It's not in the App Store quite yet, but the latest major release of "read later" app Instapaper is queued up and ready to go alongside the release of iOS 7 this week, and here's a peek at what to expect.

A pair of Mac apps received updates over the weekend, adding high resolution updates for the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display and in the case of the latter, a whole big list of other changes as well.

Apple quietly slipped out hardware updates to the AirPort Extreme Base Station and Time Capsule in June, which FCC documents claim to have stronger Wi-Fi range and performance. Despite Apple touting this newfound ability, AnandTech now has an exhaustive review of the networking products to confirm it in the real world.